Humour, Opinion, Point vs. Counterpoint

PCPCPCPCP: 123Movies is a transcendental experience

The area below the video player for Artemis Fowl, on 123Movies

Counterpoints to this Point:

123Movies appears to have a catalog of all the greatest hits of 2020, including Greyhound and Artemis Fowl. A few seconds after visiting I was greeted by a Universal opening sequence and a notice that I could watch the full movie with a free account! Wow! How nice of them to remind me. However I wanted to peruse the catalog first.

A number of ads on the side covered up bits of the catalog, so I hit the “x” button. But the ads decided to open in a new tab instead of closing, just in case I changed my mind about them. That was a sign that I was dealing with true genius: the designers of 123Movies were very much in tune with the fickle nature of the human soul. While I contemplated their innovative design, a full screen ad for RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS graced my screen and asked me if I was over 18 years old.

In a fit of whimsy, I said “No”.

Then it asked, “Do you want to play the game now for FREE?”

And I replied, “No”.

Then after a few seconds of loading the ad announced, “CONGRATULATIONS! You may enter the game now for FREE!”

In that moment I was filled with awe. Even I, so sinful a man that I had denied the grace of RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS, could be forgiven by the mighty advertisement. However, with a sigh, I closed the ad. My mission was to understand 123Movies, not the various stuff it advertised.

I clicked on Artemis Fowl, because I didn’t want a mere movie to distract me from the transcendental experience of 123Movies. But a new tab opened which told me to “GUESS THE 4-DIGIT COMBINATION TO UNLOCK THE VAULT AND WIN THIS JACKPOT”, followed by a slowly increasing number of dollars. Right now it’s at $11,763,518.89. It was very generous of 123Movies to offer to pay for my tuition, but I did not believe I could guess the PIN with just 3 attempts.

After clicking the play button, another play button appeared with an actual video player. In the corner, an eyeball next to a number seemed to suggest that Artemis Fowl had exactly 26,001 views. The use of the eye symbol to reference views requires a bit of explanation. You see, eyes contain rods and cones. These rods invoke the image of the rod used to adjust a window blind so that you can see the view outside. Hence, an eye represents a view.

Before watching the movie of the 8 year-old criminal mastermind, I decided to gaze upon some of the lovely informational notices around the page. One such notice read “If you can’t see the video and only hear the sound, please switch to Firefo”. That was an incredible recommendation, I’d never heard of the Firefo browser before! But, wait a minute, that sounds a bit like … “Firefox” … the browser I’m already using. Oh, one of the ads I mentioned earlier was covering the message, obviously to make my time on 123Movies more entertaining.

After scrolling down a little, I learned that “Artemis Fowl, a young criminal prodigy, hunts down a secret society of fairies to find his missing father”. Much to my surprise, the movie had 8.6 stars! I do not know who provided these stars, and only 5 of them were visible on my screen, but that was reassuring! Then I scrolled to the comment section, to see what other people of culture (i.e. 123Movie users) had to say about Artemis Fowl. One comment read “This movie was so trash that even though I streamed it for free I feel like I deserve a refund.” Oh! That was a very insightful comment! Thanks for saving me 95 minutes of my valuable time I thought. Then I promptly left without watching anything.

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